"But what the world fails to realize is that a villain is just a victim whose story hasn't been told." ~ Chris Colfer
True Peace can never be found within the duality of victim/victimizer. The simplest way out of the di-lemma is the tetra-lemma introduced to human thinking by Nagarjuna around 200CE. This teaching states (simplified) that I am neither a victim nor not a victim, neither a perpetrator nor not a perpetrator. As long as I insist on a solution in the world of dualism, I will not find it. The problem lies in dualism itself. If I train my mind to recognize only a cry for love or an extension of love and only allow those two options in my mind then where does punishment come in? Where does justified anger enter? Where do I find food for my understandable rage?
As long as I see myself as victim I have given the power over my state of mind to the victimizer. As long as I do that I am victimized till I die (and then, I am a victim of this failing body). Recognizing that I have a choice, that I can choose again at any time is my path to genuine freedom. Please, please do not read any of this and think that I am condoning ‘bad’ behaviour. It is not about that. It is about finally having an effective approach to heal ‘bad behaviour’.
"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." Rainer Maria Rilke
It takes a great deal of ‘beauty and courage’ to finally shed the addictive victim mantle.